


Dangling Maybes

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 3x01, Angst, Episode Related, F/M, Missing Scene Fic, The Calm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t fair. That’s what she kept repeating in her head as she walked away, hands in the air, tears burning at the backs of her eyes. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair.</p>
<p>Missing scene fic for 3x01 “The Calm”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dangling Maybes

_It wasn’t fair._

That’s what she kept repeating in her head as she walked away, back down the hall, wiping at the tears that fell freely now that she had her back to him, now that she didn’t have to look at him, to hear him say things like _Don’t ask me to say that I don’t love you._

And, really, what _was_ that? Some kind of cheesy Hallmark card line he’d pulled out of the air in the hope that it would make her feel _better?_  That it would console her, in the end, knowing that it wasn’t a matter of _dis_ interest - it wasn’t that he _didn’t_  love her, that he _didn’t_  want to be with her - but that he _was_  interested that was keeping them apart. 

_Yeah, right_. 

He may as well have stamped all over her heart in his heavy duty Arrow boots, the ones with the steel toe-caps and way too many laces. 

(How did he get in and out of those things, anyway? She never did figure it out.)

And - well, wasn’t that the entire problem? Hadn’t he told her that the very reason he couldn’t be with her is because he didn’t know if he could ever be two people at once, both himself - Oliver Queen, _her_  Oliver - and The Arrow?

“ _I thought I could be me and The Arrow, but I can’t. Not now...and maybe not ever.”_

It was just - infuriating. Upsetting. Hurtful. And so many other different things at once, because Oliver was so many different things at once - to her, and to other people.

She loved him. 

She hated him. 

She wanted to slap him. 

She wanted to kiss him. 

It just wasn’t fair. None of it was _fair._  

Not after everything they’d been through.

“ _Stop dangling maybes!”_

Pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, she tried to suppress the memories that pushed their way to the surface of her mind as she walked, as she forced her legs to take her somewhere - anywhere - that wasn’t where Oliver was. Where she wouldn’t be obliged to pretend like their conversation had never happened. Where she wouldn’t have to act like he’d kissed her and then let her walk away.

Felicity should have been visiting John and Lyla, cooing over their new baby and how cute she was. She should have been celebrating her friends’ happiness and welcoming the new arrival. Instead, she was wandering the halls of Starling City General Hospital, sniveling and crying as her hands shook and something that was half-anger, half-betrayal, and one-hundred percent _pain_  choked her throat and made her chest burn. 

“ _Say you never loved_ me...”

For years, she had thought that she and Oliver were...something. Or were moving towards something. It had started with friendly smiles and polite nods as she’d accepted the various items he’d brought to her office (along with some truly dreadful cover stories as to how he’d gotten a hold of them); a laptop riddled with bullets that he swore up and down he’d spilled a latte on, a deadly steel-tipped black arrow from “his buddy Steve”, a substance in a syringe that he’d told her was an energy drink, but had, in fact, turned out to be a sample of the drug Vertigo.

He’d been kind to her. Praised her for her talents. He’d told her she was remarkable, and she’d believed him. 

“ _Is that judgement I’m hearing?”_

_“Pride.”_

There were other things, too. A hand, warm on her shoulder, and an offer to listen if she ever wanted to talk. Insisting that she leave the Foundry the night of The Undertaking, because it was right in the middle of the zone most likely to be worst hit. Swinging from a conveniently available zip-line in the middle of a jungle on an island in the North China Sea to rescue her from a 70-year-old Japanese landmine. The crushed look on his face when he’d seen how disappointed she was in his choice of sexual partner in Isabel Rochev. 

Saving her from The Count by ending his life. 

Felicity slumped in a hard plastic visitor’s chair in the hallway she found herself in, putting her head in her hands. She rubbed at her red eyes under her glasses, sniffing, and if anybody around her noticed the crying woman in the Maternity Ward, they didn’t say anything.

Oliver had certainly picked an excellent place to crap all over her feelings. 

If she’d had any strength left to argue with him, she would have been more affronted that he’d chosen the night their close friends had become parents to so brutally put an end to what could have been.

She’d been so _happy,_ so excited, when he’d asked her out on a real date. She’d almost been able to think of nothing else ever since he’d said those words.

_“Would you like to have dinner with me?”_

He’d smiled that beautiful smile, and what was she supposed to do? She was ensnared, trapped, entranced by his giddy eagerness and bashful nerves. She couldn’t help it. Felicity was drawn to him, for whatever reason it may have been, and something kept bringing her back to him no matter how much she tried to resist it. 

She’d had butterflies in her stomach and a permanent blush to her cheeks, almost as deep as her lipstick, for an entire day and a half while she anticipated how the night would go. What she would wear. How he would look. Would they hold hands at all? Would he pick up the check, or would they split it? What would they talk about? She didn’t know what Oliver was like on a date; she hadn’t known what to expect.

She’d also thought about whether or not he would kiss her goodnight afterwards.

_That_  had been a particularly enjoyable fantasy. 

But they’d never made it to the kissing part. Or, really, to the holding hands part. 

As it happened, their date had been explosive for an entirely different reason than how Oliver made her feel just by being in the same room as her.

And then....

It had been over before it had begun.

Now, they were here, and Felicity felt like a popped balloon letting out a steady stream of air in forlorn whistle, shrinking rapidly until there was nothing left except a flimsy piece of rubber. 

She felt..deflated. Sad. Like she was mourning for something, but that something wasn’t anything she’d ever had in the first place.

_“Stop dangling maybes!”_

Her own words came back to her, biting at her raw nerves and bruised heart. A few months ago, on the beachfront of Lian Yu, she’d given him a way out. She’d given him an opportunity to deny what he’d told her in the Queen Mansion right before Slade Wilson had kidnapped her.

“ _Talk about unthinkable. You and me, I mean.”_

She’d attempted to make a joke of it; _you and me, together? Hilarious!_  It had eased her swirling thoughts a little, to make light of the situation. 

But he never denied it. 

He never _denied_  it.

Standing on the shore with him that day in the afternoon sunlight, Deathstroke safely incarcerated in the specially-built ARGUS facility on the island, she’d given him an opportunity to say, _I never meant it. It was just a ploy to fool Slade. It wasn’t real._

She’d given him a way to tell her he didn’t love her, and he didn’t take it.

And that had opened up a Pandora’s box of all kinds of possibilities - and fears. 

“ _Don’t ask me to say that I don’t love you....”_

_Oh, Oliver,_ she wanted to say, _why are you doing this to me? To us?_

_What are you so afraid of that you won’t even give us a chance?_

Taking off her glasses, she stared at the linoleum floor, listening to the noises of the hospital around her. She’d have to go back to John and Lyla soon; they’d be wondering where she’d gone to.

And Oliver...well. She didn’t want to think about him anymore, and she wasn’t going to.

It wasn’t fair.

It just wasn’t fair.

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I watched
> 
> [that video](http://bigtimerushx.tumblr.com/post/137509298720/ok-but-i-removed-the-background-music-from-their)
> 
> of the 3x01 kiss without the background music and it gutted me, so I had to write something to get out my feelings.


End file.
